Exciting changes for Pilots of America (New forum software)

I think it's a mistake not to make POA accessible via Tapatalk.

That app's ability to show "participated threads" without the falderal of searching for a tiny picture of my avatar on a hundred threads is extremely valuable.

Alternatively, if you could add a "participated threads" search button, that would resolve the issue. Thanks!
 
Jay Honeck said:
Alternatively, if you could add a "participated threads" search button, that would resolve the issue. Thanks!
Click to expand...
"Watch" the threads you are interested in, then click on "watched threads".
 
I miss the thread title being at the top of each post.
I guess I have a really crappy memory and i click and read the responses and forget what they are actually about.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I miss the thread title being at the top of each post.
I guess I have a really crappy memory and i click and read the responses and forget what they are actually about.
Click to expand...

In your browser tab it has the thread title.
 
EdFred said:
In your browser tab it has the thread title.
Click to expand...
Those of us that use a "real" browser only get a few words per tab to see though.

I notice, however, that most other vBulletin forums don't show the title on each post either. Was that a customization?
 
SkyHog said:
Those of us that use a "real" browser only get a few words per tab to see though.

I notice, however, that most other vBulletin forums don't show the title on each post either. Was that a customization?
Click to expand...

You know what's amazing? If you hover your mouse over the browser tab it shows the whole title - along with the page number. Crazy!
 
Everskyward said:
"Watch" the threads you are interested in, then click on "watched threads".
Click to expand...

Jay Honeck said:
I think it's a mistake not to make POA accessible via Tapatalk.

That app's ability to show "participated threads" without the falderal of searching for a tiny picture of my avatar on a hundred threads is extremely valuable.

Alternatively, if you could add a "participated threads" search button, that would resolve the issue. Thanks!
Click to expand...

It's even easier than that. Have the system automatically mark threads to be watched when you participate in them. You'll find this in your User Preferences.

upload_2016-2-25_13-27-26.png
 
For some of these responses/members, I'm calling a Lincoln on them....
 
TangoWhiskey said:
It's also at the top of every page in the thread. Just outside the conversation, at the top:

View attachment 44147
Click to expand...

But when you scroll down it is not in each post like it was on vbulletin which is what Bryan was originally talking about. When you scroll down, the top of the page is no longer visible. But the browser tab is.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
@timwinters : It's there. Right click on "View attachment 44143" and "copy URL" or "copy image address" or whatever your browser calls it
Click to expand...

Yeah, but that means I have to find it first. The old software had a list, in my user CP, of all the photos & docs that I had uploaded since day one.

Yeah, I know, Likely nothing that can be done. There are certainly some features that were better on the old...more that are better on the new...but that's one I'll really miss.
 
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Jay Honeck said:
I think it's a mistake not to make POA accessible via Tapatalk.

That app's ability to show "participated threads" without the falderal of searching for a tiny picture of my avatar on a hundred threads is extremely valuable.

Alternatively, if you could add a "participated threads" search button, that would resolve the issue. Thanks!
Click to expand...

If you hover over the person icon in the upper right corner, there is an option with a magnifying glass in front of it that says 'Your Content'. That appears to show all the threads you have posted in. Navigation isn't bad, just hover and one click. I am with you, the Participated feature on Tapatalk was probably my favorite feature.
 
John221us said:
If you hover over the person icon in the upper right corner, there is an option with a magnifying glass in front of it that says 'Your Content'. That appears to show all the threads you have posted in. Navigation isn't bad, just hover and one click. I am with you, the Participated feature on Tapatalk was probably my favorite feature.
Click to expand...

You can get that with Watched Threads. Enable "automatically watch threads you post in" in your account Preferences.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
You can get that with Watched Threads. Enable "automatically watch threads you post in" in your account Preferences.
Click to expand...
I just did that, but it isn't retroactive. I suppose I could just run that list of posts I mentioned above and mark the threads to watch manually.
 
I don't think the XenForo people understand "navigation bars" at all.

Example: Here's this thread if you're at the top...

Screen Shot 2016-02-25 at 17.44.50.png

You can get around almost everything on the site, using these buttons up here.

Now you scroll down a bit and they pop up this bar... at the top of your screen, and it floats there all the while you're scrolling down the thread...

Screen Shot 2016-02-25 at 17.45.14.png

Note how almost NOTHING that was on the navigation portion of the screen migrates to the floating bar? Not even "News and Management" and "Site Feedback and Support", which were on the original nav bar?

The whole "Mark Forums Read" ... "New Posts" bar is just gone after you scroll down.

I think they were trying to "de-clutter" things as you scrolled down into the thread, but they forgot to bring along the other nav functions from even the original bar at the top.

I also don't "get" the top right buttons. "Home" is duplicated which is already in what I'm calling the "nav bar", as is "Forums" and both survive the scroll in it to when it swiches to a floater. "Members" is only available top-right, and not on the non-scrolled nav-bar, but appears magically in the scrolled one. As do the icons... but NOT the "hamburger" (as Mari dubbed it... the blue stack box directly under the other four right top icons).

And why label the three buttons top right with text, but have to mouse-over the four other icons?

Strangely disjointed.

Now scroll all the way to the bottom... hey wait, the original non-floating nav-bar is there... but there's a floating nav-bar at the top still... wasn't it supposed to replace the top one?

Screen Shot 2016-02-25 at 17.53.47.png

And more icons in the bottom right that start interestingly... a "Contact Us"... but we had "Site Feedback and Support" at the top and to the left on the non-floating nav-bars, and interestingly they don't go to the same URL...

Then "Help" ... wait, what? We haven't seen that one before have we? That's the first use of "Help" and it goes to yet another page that explains BBCODE and stuff... but there's no "Help" anywhere else on the page...

And then another House icon, for Home... we're up to four of those...

And then a whole new concept / nav-thingy... an up-arrow for "Top". Wait, why isn't there a down-arrow thingy at the top of the page for "Bottom"?? Why only a "top", and crammed over into a corner...

Then the icon mostly used for WiFi or radio, re-used to mean... RSS feed? Okay I guess that's the RSS feed icon, but that's the only place they put it? Bottom right of every thread? And it takes you to an RSS feed for the WHOLE site...

And the hamburger makes a comeback, here at the bottom too.

It kinda looks like the XF folks must enjoy their Adderall, maybe... or they just like being confusing. I dunno. Not to worry, it's common for web designers to just slap crap all over the screen and think it looks good or makes sense... but this is why I hate web interfaces. If you're going to bother writing a floating bar... JUST PUT EVERYTHING ON THE BAR AND THAT KEEPS IT OUT OF THE WAY!

Web devs... :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Oh hahaha there's another funny one I see after opening up the smilies button, but I can guess as to why on the back-end...

Screen Shot 2016-02-25 at 18.04.04.png

Design-wise, y'all do realize that nobody cares in the slightest what KIND of smilies they are, right? In two years, what will "Legacy PoA" be? Heh... But...

I bet y'all did that because you didn't want to pollute the XF directory (in case of future upgrades) with files/filenames that might get overwritten? (Or there were file name conflicts already?) Just a guess... but do think about UI / UX... nobody cares what kind of Smilies (or what century they came from) they are... (GRIN!)

I get it though... that one is probably a sysadmin "Ah, ****!... They didn't provide a directory to put add-on smilies in... and we're going to have a namespace clash..."!

Anyway... navigation bars are definitely quite strange. They just kinda throw the icons around and/or the Text Buttons (they're not consistent on whether they use text, icon plus text, or just icon either) in the corners and top and bottom of a thread page, and then have this odd floating bar show up just to float along with ya, too... like they can't make up their minds on how they want the user to do site nav.
 
I know it's not PoA-like of me to actually try something before complaining about it, but for the last 2 days I've been using my browser on my iPhone to access PoA. Since that's the new direction I figured I'd get used to it now. Well lemme tell ya, it's a step back, I don't like it. I said it before the new site and now that I've tried it and gave it a chance, I still feel the same way, I'm not thrilled. It is what it is though, I'm not gonna cash in my banner.
 
Jay Honeck said:
I think it's a mistake not to make POA accessible via Tapatalk.

That app's ability to show "participated threads" without the falderal of searching for a tiny picture of my avatar on a hundred threads is extremely valuable.

Alternatively, if you could add a "participated threads" search button, that would resolve the issue. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Is this true? POA will no longer be accessible via Tapatalk?
 
denverpilot said:
Now you scroll down a bit and they pop up this bar... at the top of your screen, and it floats there all the while you're scrolling down the thread...

View attachment 44152

Note how almost NOTHING that was on the navigation portion of the screen migrates to the floating bar? Not even "News and Management" and "Site Feedback and Support", which were on the original nav bar?

The whole "Mark Forums Read" ... "New Posts" bar is just gone after you scroll down.
Click to expand...
I have also noticed that the floating bar is gone. At this point it seems as if it's completely gone. But I also remember someone from the beta complained about not being able to see the formatting bar in the reply box because it was obscured by the floating bar.

@jason? @TangoWhiskey?

Nevermind, it's back!
 
Last edited:
denverpilot said:
I don't think the XenForo people understand "navigation bars" at all.

Example: Here's this thread if you're at the top...

View attachment 44151

You can get around almost everything on the site, using these buttons up here.

Now you scroll down a bit and they pop up this bar... at the top of your screen, and it floats there all the while you're scrolling down the thread...

View attachment 44152

Note how almost NOTHING that was on the navigation portion of the screen migrates to the floating bar? Not even "News and Management" and "Site Feedback and Support", which were on the original nav bar?

The whole "Mark Forums Read" ... "New Posts" bar is just gone after you scroll down.

I think they were trying to "de-clutter" things as you scrolled down into the thread, but they forgot to bring along the other nav functions from even the original bar at the top.

I also don't "get" the top right buttons. "Home" is duplicated which is already in what I'm calling the "nav bar", as is "Forums" and both survive the scroll in it to when it swiches to a floater. "Members" is only available top-right, and not on the non-scrolled nav-bar, but appears magically in the scrolled one. As do the icons... but NOT the "hamburger" (as Mari dubbed it... the blue stack box directly under the other four right top icons).

And why label the three buttons top right with text, but have to mouse-over the four other icons?

Strangely disjointed.

Now scroll all the way to the bottom... hey wait, the original non-floating nav-bar is there... but there's a floating nav-bar at the top still... wasn't it supposed to replace the top one?

View attachment 44153

And more icons in the bottom right that start interestingly... a "Contact Us"... but we had "Site Feedback and Support" at the top and to the left on the non-floating nav-bars, and interestingly they don't go to the same URL...

Then "Help" ... wait, what? We haven't seen that one before have we? That's the first use of "Help" and it goes to yet another page that explains BBCODE and stuff... but there's no "Help" anywhere else on the page...

And then another House icon, for Home... we're up to four of those...

And then a whole new concept / nav-thingy... an up-arrow for "Top". Wait, why isn't there a down-arrow thingy at the top of the page for "Bottom"?? Why only a "top", and crammed over into a corner...

Then the icon mostly used for WiFi or radio, re-used to mean... RSS feed? Okay I guess that's the RSS feed icon, but that's the only place they put it? Bottom right of every thread? And it takes you to an RSS feed for the WHOLE site...

And the hamburger makes a comeback, here at the bottom too.

It kinda looks like the XF folks must enjoy their Adderall, maybe... or they just like being confusing. I dunno. Not to worry, it's common for web designers to just slap crap all over the screen and think it looks good or makes sense... but this is why I hate web interfaces. If you're going to bother writing a floating bar... JUST PUT EVERYTHING ON THE BAR AND THAT KEEPS IT OUT OF THE WAY!

Web devs... :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Oh hahaha there's another funny one I see after opening up the smilies button, but I can guess as to why on the back-end...

View attachment 44160

Design-wise, y'all do realize that nobody cares in the slightest what KIND of smilies they are, right? In two years, what will "Legacy PoA" be? Heh... But...

I bet y'all did that because you didn't want to pollute the XF directory (in case of future upgrades) with files/filenames that might get overwritten? (Or there were file name conflicts already?) Just a guess... but do think about UI / UX... nobody cares what kind of Smilies (or what century they came from) they are... (GRIN!)

I get it though... that one is probably a sysadmin "Ah, ****!... They didn't provide a directory to put add-on smilies in... and we're going to have a namespace clash..."!

Anyway... navigation bars are definitely quite strange. They just kinda throw the icons around and/or the Text Buttons (they're not consistent on whether they use text, icon plus text, or just icon either) in the corners and top and bottom of a thread page, and then have this odd floating bar show up just to float along with ya, too... like they can't make up their minds on how they want the user to do site nav.
Click to expand...
Wow, Nate. You've had weeks and weeks to give us feedback and now you write 28 posts picking apart every single flaw you can find. Some of which aren't really flaws but you not bothering to figure out how it works. Good lord. How do you write paragraphs about my choice to call it legacy smilies? The reason is that I wanted to get the old ones loaded in and then phase the old ones out with more modern smilies as the community helped us find some. I've planned on the legacy folder disappearing.
 
Last edited:
Overall good stuff and thank you for keeping on tweaking based on people's feedback. Did anyone find a user setting so you can change posts per page? My preferred is 50 but that because I ride public transit and my connection drops out frequently.
 
masloki said:
Overall good stuff and thank you for keeping on tweaking based on people's feedback. Did anyone find a user setting so you can change posts per page? My preferred is 50 but that because I ride public transit and my connection drops out frequently.
Click to expand...
Troy updated it to 40, I think. It's a system wide setting.
 
jason said:
Troy updated it to 40, I think. It's a system wide setting.
Click to expand...
I might have the wrong terms. I see 40 thread titles listed on a page, but when I open one thread, it shows 20 posts but 50 is better, for me. Is that a system setting only, or hiding somewhere in my user settings?
 
masloki said:
I might have the wrong terms. I see 40 thread titles listed on a page, but when I open one thread, it shows 20 posts but 50 is better, for me. Is that a system setting only, or hiding somewhere in my user settings?
Click to expand...
I don't think so. I'll have to look. We have to strike a balance between desktop and mobile users for the default. Scrolling through 50 with a thumb to get to bottom nav can be painful.
 
Yup, 50 per page is definitely not fun for some so no biggie if it isn't there. My usual train ride is long pressing a few threads so they load in the background tab. Then I have plenty to read in the cellular dead zones.
 
denverpilot said:
I don't think the XenForo people understand "navigation bars" at all.

Example: Here's this thread if you're at the top...

View attachment 44151

You can get around almost everything on the site, using these buttons up here.

Now you scroll down a bit and they pop up this bar... at the top of your screen, and it floats there all the while you're scrolling down the thread...

View attachment 44152

Note how almost NOTHING that was on the navigation portion of the screen migrates to the floating bar? Not even "News and Management" and "Site Feedback and Support", which were on the original nav bar?

The whole "Mark Forums Read" ... "New Posts" bar is just gone after you scroll down.

I think they were trying to "de-clutter" things as you scrolled down into the thread, but they forgot to bring along the other nav functions from even the original bar at the top.

I also don't "get" the top right buttons. "Home" is duplicated which is already in what I'm calling the "nav bar", as is "Forums" and both survive the scroll in it to when it swiches to a floater. "Members" is only available top-right, and not on the non-scrolled nav-bar, but appears magically in the scrolled one. As do the icons... but NOT the "hamburger" (as Mari dubbed it... the blue stack box directly under the other four right top icons).

And why label the three buttons top right with text, but have to mouse-over the four other icons?

Strangely disjointed.

Now scroll all the way to the bottom... hey wait, the original non-floating nav-bar is there... but there's a floating nav-bar at the top still... wasn't it supposed to replace the top one?

View attachment 44153

And more icons in the bottom right that start interestingly... a "Contact Us"... but we had "Site Feedback and Support" at the top and to the left on the non-floating nav-bars, and interestingly they don't go to the same URL...

Then "Help" ... wait, what? We haven't seen that one before have we? That's the first use of "Help" and it goes to yet another page that explains BBCODE and stuff... but there's no "Help" anywhere else on the page...

And then another House icon, for Home... we're up to four of those...

And then a whole new concept / nav-thingy... an up-arrow for "Top". Wait, why isn't there a down-arrow thingy at the top of the page for "Bottom"?? Why only a "top", and crammed over into a corner...

Then the icon mostly used for WiFi or radio, re-used to mean... RSS feed? Okay I guess that's the RSS feed icon, but that's the only place they put it? Bottom right of every thread? And it takes you to an RSS feed for the WHOLE site...

And the hamburger makes a comeback, here at the bottom too.

It kinda looks like the XF folks must enjoy their Adderall, maybe... or they just like being confusing. I dunno. Not to worry, it's common for web designers to just slap crap all over the screen and think it looks good or makes sense... but this is why I hate web interfaces. If you're going to bother writing a floating bar... JUST PUT EVERYTHING ON THE BAR AND THAT KEEPS IT OUT OF THE WAY!

Web devs... :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Oh hahaha there's another funny one I see after opening up the smilies button, but I can guess as to why on the back-end...

View attachment 44160

Design-wise, y'all do realize that nobody cares in the slightest what KIND of smilies they are, right? In two years, what will "Legacy PoA" be? Heh... But...

I bet y'all did that because you didn't want to pollute the XF directory (in case of future upgrades) with files/filenames that might get overwritten? (Or there were file name conflicts already?) Just a guess... but do think about UI / UX... nobody cares what kind of Smilies (or what century they came from) they are... (GRIN!)

I get it though... that one is probably a sysadmin "Ah, ****!... They didn't provide a directory to put add-on smilies in... and we're going to have a namespace clash..."!

Anyway... navigation bars are definitely quite strange. They just kinda throw the icons around and/or the Text Buttons (they're not consistent on whether they use text, icon plus text, or just icon either) in the corners and top and bottom of a thread page, and then have this odd floating bar show up just to float along with ya, too... like they can't make up their minds on how they want the user to do site nav.
Click to expand...

You're putting way too much thought into it. It's actually much simpler than that. We wrote it that way just to **** you off, Nate! ;-) Early Apil Fools!
 
jason said:
Troy updated it to 40, I think. It's a system wide setting.
Click to expand...

masloki said:
I might have the wrong terms. I see 40 thread titles listed on a page, but when I open one thread, it shows 20 posts but 50 is better, for me. Is that a system setting only, or hiding somewhere in my user settings?
Click to expand...

@jason is correct. But based on this input, @masloki, I've updated the number of posts per page to 40, as well.
 
The question is whether people would rather scroll through a bunch of titles or click on the link for page 2 (or more). Personally, I would rather scroll, even on an iPhone.

But if I have been gone for a while and there a ton of posts, I usually only read the threads I have participated in, briefly skim the rest of the titles for interest, then use that dreaded "mark forums read" button.
 
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I'm a scroller as well. Another site I used to go on allowed 100 posts per page. That was nice.
 
Everskyward said:
The question is whether people would rather scroll through a bunch of titles or click on the link for page 2 (or more). Personally, I would rather scroll, even on an iPhone.

But if I have been gone for a while and there a ton of posts, I usually only read the threads I have participated in, briefly skim the rest of the titles for interest, then use that dreaded "mark forums read" button.
Click to expand...

Me too. I'd rather scroll down and keep reading than click that little "2" "3" or "4" at the bottom.
 
Scrolling... I'd rather scroll than link/page. Esp when ready to go back from whence I came - multiple "backs" is annoying.

The spastic XenForo scroll arrows (which I find irksome, distractingly flickering in and out of view), do serve a purpose for those on a loooong page - one tap to go to the top or bottom of the page.
 
Put my vote for scrolling too. On vBulletin, I make my settings for the most possible.

My typical internet connection is dog slow, and wait for the next page to load is rather painful. I'd rather suffer through the pain for a few pages as possible.
 
jason said:
Wow, Nate. You've had weeks and weeks to give us feedback and now you write 28 posts picking apart every single flaw you can find. Some of which aren't really flaws but you not bothering to figure out how it works. Good lord. How do you write paragraphs about my choice to call it legacy smilies? The reason is that I wanted to get the old ones loaded in and then phase the old ones out with more modern smilies as the community helped us find some. I've planned on the legacy folder disappearing.
Click to expand...

Methinks you've missed a critical item in my other posts. I DID NOT TEST THIS ON THE PHONE DURING THE BETA... because I ASSUMED Tapatalk would still be around. Percentage-wise, I spent 10% of my time testing XF from mobile and 90% from a browser, because I thought (mistakenly) that you wanted UI feedback for the poor souls stuck using a web interface. (Is there a gag or a barf smiley? LOL... read on...)

As far as the detail level goes, I do this crap as a side-line at work, you know... we are much harsher on our UI commentary on our internal Slack channel than anything I've posted here. Our devs are nearly fanatical about it, in fact. They read and share stuff about good UI/UX all the time. Maybe it's just a habit at this point. I end up reading too much about it inbetween fixing real sysadmin'y minty fresh forest fires.

Apologies if any of it was shocking to you, either detail level or quantity. Good UI is hard. Most websites REALLY suck at it. XF is "pretty good", but not "great". A sincere analysis of the navbar stuff is just the tip of the iceberg on a UX analysis of a website... it's not even the hard details... UI/UX is a ***** to get right.

(Oh and I do want to kill the devs -- being the sysadmin and all -- when they use MASSIVELY HUGE CSS and JavaScript stuff that takes INSANE amounts of time to download to mobile users on... yes, it really happens... EDGE networks... 2G baby! But I usually lose that argument... they love their massive code downloads. We've made them smash it and run it through a simplifier and cache as much of it client-side as they can, but browsers... browsers just suck... there's no good way around it... they do... doesn't mean they aren't what everyone uses these days, but they still suck... and slow mobile data still exists... REALLY slow... modem speeds...)

TangoWhiskey said:
You're putting way too much thought into it. It's actually much simpler than that. We wrote it that way just to **** you off, Nate! ;-) Early Apil Fools!
Click to expand...

LOL... See above. It's what we "do" here...

Example: You should see how long our login box takes to load on one of our pay sites... I want to kick someone square in the round-orbs here at work for that one... makes it look like our site is down... then this floaty, pretty, colorful, "can predict some text", "might even make you bacon and eggs for breakfast"... LOGIN BOX pops up... but they love it. It's a hassle if the site is having a speed issue or a bandwidth issue and you need to log into it and did a full browser cache dump... you can count clock seconds waiting on a login box... drives me insane. I want "Username: , Password: " and I want it like the second I hit the stupid thing. They want "pretty", "floaty", "branded", and all that stuff. (GRIN)

TangoWhiskey said:
Me too. I'd rather scroll down and keep reading than click that little "2" "3" or "4" at the bottom.
Click to expand...

Ditto on this one. Less "target practice" on the phone. Thumb-scroll is easy. Poking at tiny numbers is hard(er).

Keep in mind when I say something "sucks" it's my vernacular and style, it's not emotional. In browser based UI, there's a range from "survivable but sucks" -- to "sucks so bad it's hard to use" -- to "sucks so bad I WON'T use" -- to "sucks so bad it doesn't even work". There's really no level at which a browser doesn't suck on mobile. Just variations on the theme. Devs don't like to admit that much, but it is true. A few VERY RARE places have ALMOST gotten mobile web to work nearly as well as their Apps... at least as far as duplicating the UI / UX... and even those sites aren't "quite right"... FB comes to mind, but there's probably better examples.

For the record I spent some time (attempting to) read through the XF forums and other sources last night trying to see how "intrusive" or problematic TT really is when loaded with XF. For every actual technical post/problem well-defined and objectively stated, there were 6-8 other posts that only focused on "which UI was better". Really hard to see how much of a PITA adding TT code into XF really is going to be for Jason. I don't want to make his life hell for it, really I don't. I hate that as a sysadmin too.

Trying to find real technical info on what it jacks with, was damned near impossible without setting up a test server (which I considered for about ten minutes, and decided I wanted four hours of sleep last night instead... LOL!).

Best I could come up with thinking about it further today was: Pay the poor sysadmin. LOL. Maybe PoA should take donations from TT users that could be put toward a headache fund for Jason? Want TT, pay up. Ha...

But it doesn't fix that PITA problem for Jason if it's REALLY that bad. I dunno...

I also thought to myself, "Self... you're a sysadmin and you could volunteer to try to help sort out that **** and help Jason out..." but I fear that's just going to trigger "The Mythical Man Month" death march, and having more cooks in the kitchen doesn't really help the problem. (But let me know if it does.)

Sorry - there's some more paragraphs. :) I type fast. Forcing me to a real keyboard only makes it easier. (HAHAHAHA! GRIN...)
 
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